Learn or earn? Making sense of language teaching and learning at a Mexican University through a Change Laboratory intervention

Making a case for Cultural Historical Activity Theory: Examples of CHAT in practice

“…In addition to the three projects presented here in recent years CHAT has underpinned research into mathematical modelling and science education (Chao et al, 2017;Erduran, 2018;Galleguillos & de Carvalho Borba, 2018;Hernandez-Martinez & Vos, 2018), and higher education (Englund, Olofsson, & Price, 2018;Kaatrakoski, Littlejohn, & Hood, 2017). It has been used to investigate mobile tool use (Paskevicius & Knaack, 2018) as well as English language teaching and learning (Montoro, 2016;Rind, 2016). CHAT remains a theory with versatility and 'applicability to a wide variety of settings, contexts and approaches' (Murphy & Rodriguez-Manzanares, 2008, p. 453).…”

The insider Change Laboratory in practice

“…There are examples of Activity Theory driven research in the UAE (Al Ali, 2020;Miles, 2020;2021) but I was unable to identify any Change Laboratories. Recent Change Laboratory examples are not uncommon (Barma et al, 2017;Englund, 2018;Nleya, 2016) yet few are concerned with ELT (Mbelani, 2018;Montoro, 2016). Interestingly, Montoro (2016) reports that the triangles representing the activity system were not 'readily picked up by the participants' of a Change Laboratory involving English Language teachers.…”

“…Secondly, the role of scribe was found to be redundant in this context, but may prove more necessary in other Change Laboratories. Finally, the participants' unwillingness to engage wholly with the theory is not unusual (Montoro, 2016) and reflects perhaps the disconnect between researchers and teachers in ELT (Copland et al, 2020;Medgyes, 2017).…”

Intervenciones formativas en educación y aprendizaje en el trabajo: aplicaciones del Laboratorio de Cambio en Iberoamérica

“…Como resultado de un estudio anterior (Montoro y Hampel, 2011) se llevaron a cabo siete sesiones de LC (con una duración promedio de 112 minutos Revista Internacional de Educación y Aprendizaje, 7(2), 2019, pp. 83-96 cada una) en la División de Ingenierías de la Universidad de Guanajuato (Montoro, 2016). Participó un grupo estable de 11 personas (profesores, coordinadores, estudiantes y el equipo de investigación) presente en todas las sesiones y otro grupo de 17 invitados (gerentes, psicólogos, profesores visitantes, colegas de otras escuelas y personal de centro de autoaprendizaje de lenguas) presente solo en sesiones específicas relevantes.…”